


One More Difference

by Verecunda



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: On the first night that Gilbert Norrell had ever passed at Hurtfew Abbey, he had lain awake, almost swallowed up by that great, oak-posted bed with its heavy hangings, rigid with fear and staring into the darkness.





	One More Difference

On the first night that Gilbert Norrell had ever passed at Hurtfew Abbey, he had lain awake, almost swallowed up by that great, oak-posted bed with its heavy hangings, rigid with fear and staring into the darkness. It had pressed in and down upon him like one solid mass of black, stifling, dense with sound: the divers creaks and knocks and groans of an unfamiliar house in the middle of the night, and, outside, the voice of the wind as it made a wild, wordless song about the trees in the park. He had always been a boy much given to timidity, and that first night in his new home had had him almost crying with fear.

Worse than the fear, however, had been the loneliness, as empty and yawning as the darkness was solid. It had been less than a week since he had seen his parents buried, and now he found himself plucked from his home and set down in another one, with an uncle whom he had never met until the funeral. An uncle who, in the entrance hall that same afternoon, had regarded him in a distant, frowning way, as one might regard a cumbersome article of furniture which has been deposited upon one’s threshold through some tradesman’s mistake. He had been no more skilled then at divining the moods and thoughts of his fellow creatures, but from that one look of his uncle’s, the young Gilbert had understood, with a singular clarity, that he was now some thing that was to be tolerated, rather than loved. And although he had been quite aware that his governess slept in the very next room to his, and that the house was well-populated with servants besides, it had seemed to him then that if he were to give in to his fear and shout for help, he would never be heard, the sound of his voice deadened by the deafening silence of indifference.

It was this first night he recalled now, as he lay in that same bed with his eyes open, much as he had done then. He was a great deal older now, and the Darkness that now pressed in upon him was very different from the darkness of that first night: even blacker, even denser, though its mass was not something solid and immutable, but rather something that flowed and swelled and changed shape about him - like the living coils of a serpent, or the waves of a heavy sea.

The sounds were different, too. Alongside the now-familiar creaks and groans of the house at rest, there were other sounds, which he had never heard in England: sundry skitterings and chucklings (brownies and redcaps were, they had quickly discovered, a great nuisance, possessed of disagreeable tempers and difficult to evict once they had decided to take up residence). And outside his window now, the wind in the trees sang wild songs in the language of the _Sidhe_.

And there was one more difference, above all the others, who announced his entrance by the creaking open and shut of the bedroom door, the sudden sharp glimmer of candelight at the corner of Mr Norrell’s eye, and the heavy tread of a gentleman who has been reading late in the library until his eyes can no longer prop themselves open.

Strange paused, and Norrell heard the sound of his candlestick being set upon the dresser, then the rustling of his garments as he undressed for bed. Then, with the grateful air of the truly tired, he lifted the counterpane and flung himself down upon the bed. This he did with such force that that area of the mattress beneath him dipped sharply, and that area of the mattress beneath Mr Norrell rose equally sharply. This, coupled with the loud breath that Strange let out very close to Mr Norrell’s ear, occasioned him some discomfort, which he communicated with a querulous noise.

“I am sorry,” murmured Strange, with no very obvious trace of contrition. “I had thought you were asleep.”

“No,” said Mr Norrell. “Merely thinking.”

“Ah.” By the sound of his voice, Strange was already three parts asleep, but he threw an arm across Mr Norrell’s person in his usual fashion and kissed him on the cheek, whereupon Mr Norrell instantly forgave his previous transgressions. “Something good, I trust.”

In many ways, there was a good deal of the small timid boy still in Mr Norrell, but a great many other things were different now, and so he found Strange’s hand in the Darkness, and whispered, “It is now.”


End file.
